TBO.COM, a global B2B travel distribution platform, recently wrapped up its Black Friday campaign, which ran across 100 countries, including the Americas, Europe, and Australia.
The campaign, now in its third year, featured more than 1,000 hotels offering discounts, deals, and added benefits to travel agents, in an effort to position Black Friday as a significant event in the B2B travel calendar.
Going retro
This year’s Black Friday campaign, titled TBO’s Greatest Hits, embraced a retro music theme, featuring travel-inspired classics and nods to past and present music devices like vinyl records, cassette players, and radios.
View this post on Instagram
The teasers, the launch and reminder videos, produced by Dubai-based content creator Mustafa Tin, used visuals reminiscent of the 1970s disco era to evoke a sense of nostalgia.
“Last year, it was all about the magic of movies where we featured great opening sequences from James Bond to Mission Impossible to the Rocky series. This year it had to be music. Retro is the in-thing across age groups, hence we decided to adopt it and had fun doing that,” said, Shyam Sunder, VP Marketing, TBO.COM.
The nostalgic tone aimed to resonate with a wide audience while adding a twist to the typically functional tone of B2B marketing. By blending playfulness with industry relevance, TBO sought to break away from the often straightforward and transactional nature of B2B marketing.
“B2B marketing has always been rational and factual and, to some extent, drab and boring. As a brand TBO believes in Human to Human marketing and this is where we have opportunity to entertain and engage our customers,” added, Sunder.
Localising Black Friday
In addition to its global messaging, the campaign also included localised efforts with travel influencers sharing user-generated content to highlight the offers and encourage bookings through travel agents.
“As much as the campaign was global in its theme and narrative, we had to bring in local user generated content with travel influencers extolling the significance of these offers to travellers with a call to action to book their next travel with a Travel Agent,” said, Rupal Panjani, who leads Brand & Supply Marketing at TBO.
The team also shared that the early results of the campaign show increased engagement, search activity, and bookings. Apart from engagement, the campaign also gave the brand significant exposure, “More than anything, this annual feature from TBO created a lot of excitement and FOMO for both Supply and Sales in an otherwise predictable marketing space.”
